FBI Agent Urges Food Safety Vigilance

KANSAS CITY (Dow Jones)--Constant vigilance is needed to keep U.S. food safe, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation Section Chief Jenifer Smith Tuesday.

Smith was speaking to a general session of the third annual International Symposium on Agroterrorism here. She said keeping out diseases from U.S. crops and livestock is the number one priority for her division of the FBI, and an act of terrorism could come at any point in the production cycle.

People expect safe food, Smith said, plus it has a high value to the U.S. economy. She provided a chart that said commodities such as cattle, poultry, dairy, crops and hogs contributed $159.6 billion to the economy in 2004, and said international trade is directly affected by the absence of disease in any commodity.

Smith broke down threat sources as domestic and international. She said anti-biotechnical groups like the Earth Liberation Front and lesser-known domestic extremist groups often inflict vandalism and violence threats. These are meant to discourage research into genetically modified plants and organisms as well as disease research.

Those acts have been successful in driving some scientists away from the research, Smith said.

Animal rights extremist groups like the Animal Liberation Front also have a history of attacking scientific establishments using animals for disease research, she said. These groups also are credited with vandalizing restaurants, swine facilities as well as individual scientists.

In the post 9/11 environment, it is imperative that more is done to pre-empt and disrupt potential acts of terrorism against U.S. agriculture, Smith said. Because of this, the FBI is using the Patriot Act to clamp down on these groups to deter terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad, she said.

Those efforts tie in with the counter-terrorism work against groups like al-Qaida, Smith said. Such groups are well aware of the potential to terrorize and disrupt the U.S. economy, even if they have not yet chosen to do so, she said.

To that end, the U.S. has been working with other countries to track down reported terrorist plans, Smith said. Each threat must be traced, and even if they prove to be false, the exercise allows agencies to work together to make themselves more efficient.

Just because there is no current verbalized threat to the U.S. food supply doesn't mean one isn't being planned, Smith said. "Constant vigilance" is key, she said.

Source: Lester Aldrich, 913-322-5179; Dow Jones Newswires; Lester.aldrich@dowjones.com